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How revolutionary? Obviously doing the baseband processing is nothing new (though nice to see competition for Qualcomm).

The real issue, what makes it a genuine soft radio, is do they doing the RF filtering digitally? Or, to put it it differently and to get to the real point, can you tell this thing to lock onto any damn weird frequency (or pair or triplet or quadruplet) of LTE frequencies, all ten kazillion combos defined by 4GPP, and it will just work? In other words, an end to all the "which LTE bands does this phone support" nonsense?Reply

You might want to read the last paragraph again if you aren't clear on the specs of the modem..."Initially i500 will be capable of UE Category 3 LTE (100 Mbps downlink on 20 MHz FDD-LTE) and a later release will enable UE Category 4 LTE, which is one of the nice software upgradeable parts of an SDR architecture. On the WCDMA/HSPA+ side, DC-HSPA+ (42 Mbps downlink) is supported. I'm told that the initial 3GPP release will be 9, and later 10 with LTE Category 4 and carrier aggregation for LTE. i500 at present I'm told includes 3GPP family air interfaces (GSM/EDGE/WCDMA/LTE), no word on CDMA2000 1x/EVDO 3GPP2 suite making it. Voice modes including VoLTE are indeed supported as well. "

It can work with any FDD-LTE bands, only limited by the software installed.Reply

That doesn't answer the question of whether it is doing the RF filtering digitally or not. A Qualcomm chip can ALSO work with any FDD-LTE bands, but it has to be fed by an RF front-end which filters the signal (these days usually through an electro-mechanical surface wave resonator).Reply